The Tower of Babel in Chinatown

In the process of finding artifacts for the "Sensory Mapping of Religious New York" assignment, there were many objects that I have considered examining before stumbling upon an art instillation that invoked the most thought and wonder in me. It was a serendipitous moment; my friend and I had neither planned to be on that particular street nor had I planned to find a object of interest that day. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, my friend and I were wandering around Chinatown after a great afternoon at a cat cafe. Aimless and without a particular destination, we stumbled upon a street full of art galleries. Enamored and appreciative of art, we spent hours walking in and out of the galleries. One of the galleries that piqued our interests was a gallery with a large, paper based installation of a building of some sort. Intrigued, we entered where we learned that the instillation was called "Babel". With that piece of information, the wheels in my head started whirring and clicking as I reanalyze the instillation. "It makes absolute sense," I cry out triumphantly to my friend. "If you look closely at the papers that the artist chose, they're all written in a different language. This one is in Arabic script. This one is in Mandarin. This one is in English. According to the Bible, the Tower of Babel was what people constructed to reach the heavens. Angered, God scattered the people all over the Earth and made it so that they all spoke different languages so that they can never gather together and continue building the city. The different languages on the paper represent what happened!" For my friend, this art instillation was simply a very beautiful, intricate tower made of yellowed paper and black ink. However, with my explanation which I derived from the title, the artwork had received a new religious connotation. It was no longer just a cool paper based tower, it was a symbol of what had been before God had separated people by changing our language.

 Now that I think about it, what made the artwork and the situation so interesting also includes where I found this particular artifact. The fact that I found the "Tower of Babel" in Chinatown speaks a lot to me. Even though I live in America where the predominant language is English, when I was in Chinatown, I felt so vastly different from the people surrounding me. I, too, am an Asian American and probably blend right in compared to people of most ethnicities. However, I am a Korean American and thus, couldn't decipher or understand a single word the buzzing community around me was speaking. It was foreign. I felt foreign. At a place like Chinatown, more so New York City, a cultural melting pot, I couldn't imagine a time period where everyone spoke a common tongue and gathered in one location. According to the Bible, there was a point in time where "whole world had one language and a common speech" (Gen. 11.2.). Ideas, beliefs, thoughts were communicated so much more easily; there was no such thing as a language barrier. Just an hour before going to the art gallery, my friend and I had decided to pop into a Chinese bakery where I ordered a pork bun. The process of communicating that I wanted a pork bun was not as simple as it could be. At first, I attempted to use my broken Mandarin (which I learned for three years in high school). That attempt promptly failed as she just stared at me in contempt and confusion. I immediately switched to English which she understood a little better. I asked my friend, who speaks Mandarin, what I said wrong. She said that my tones went from Mandarin to Cantonese which made it confusing. It is baffling how a language barrier made it so difficult for me to purchase a pork bun. I remember a story that my father told me about his first few months in America. Everyday, he ordered a hamburger and a red gatorade because those were the only things on the menu that he could pronounce. One day, he really wanted a purple one and consequently ordered a purple gatorade. However, they didn't understand his thick accent (there is no "ur" sound in Korean language) so he just reverted back to purchasing red gatorades. Language prevented my father from even proceeding with something as simple as purchasing a drink. This would've never happened before the  building of Babel. Now that I think about it, it is fascinating to realize that the creation of Babel frightened God more than anger him. To quote Genesis 11, God saw the building of Babel and said, "if as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them" (Gen. 11.6). Thus, the Bible suggests that the creation of Babel was a threat to God's omnipotency and power which was why he decided to separate everyone and prevent the spreading of such grandiose ideas. God was ultimately afraid of the potential power humans had if they were to openly exchange ideas and act upon them. Words had power. God's decision to divide people to language cuts into both text and words. God had devised a system where some people will ultimately never understand another solely because of their tongue. 

However, Lothar Osterburg, the artist, poses a different question; in the Babel series Osterburg asks, "What if God interrupted the singular pursuit of building the tower and gave people different languages and scattered them across the world so that mankind could develop a multitude of languages, philosophies, and religions- reaching broader and farther in every way making the possibilities for achievement limitless" (Heller). This is a very unique perspective on Babel which I have never considered. Osterburg is suggesting that the division of people ultimately accomplishes what God had tried to prevent in the first place, "limitless[ness]". In some ways, Osterburg may be onto something. For example, from our readings, Jack Kerouac combined Buddhism (which originates from the East) and Catholicism (which came to being from the West) in order to achieve a fuller understanding of his spirituality and the world around him. Leila Ahmed was able to witness multiple religious practices including Catholicism, Christianity, and Islam which helped her have a better understanding of religion. As a student in this class, I was able to read texts with people of varying beliefs that stem from different cultures and languages and apply it into my own life. As Osterburg suggests, I suppose that differences ultimately do have the potential to widen our horizons and find things we wouldn't have found without the differences. Perhaps language barriers are actually not barriers at all and cultures or beliefs not borders in the world. These borders and barriers can be crossed through the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and thoughts. Perhaps his installation of the Tower of Babel is not merely a pretty tower or a monument that represents God's wrath and our weakness, but a model that symbolizes our potential for growth and change. Now that I look at the other pictures I took, the art instillation had areas where mini towers were constructed which may represent progress. According to Heller, "Osterburg feels the Tower of Babel is a living organism like an ancient city, constantly changing, with a cumulative and visible architectural history" (Heller). The tower is not a model of what had happened, but instead a base for new beliefs and ideas to emerge. His response to the acids of modernity seems to be generally positive; the destruction and corrosion of the ancient creates space for new beliefs to emerge. If people do continue to work pass the differences in each other, perhaps even a separation in language or culture may not stop us from being limitless and touching the heavens. 

The Holy Bible: New International Version, Containing the Old Testament and the New Testament. 

Grand Rapids: Zondervan Bible, 1978. Print.

Heller, Lesley. "Lesley Heller Workspace." - Lothar Osterburg: Babel. Lesley Heller Workspace, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.